


Coca-Cola

by Birdbitch



Category: Marvel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 13:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1430938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the same thing, but it’s still different. Or, an exercise in letting small things bother you to the point where they can’t be ignored anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coca-Cola

**Author's Note:**

> There aren’t really any spoilers for Winter Soldier, but if you’re really worried, don’t read this until you’ve seen the movie. I started thinking about how the Coca-Cola that Steve Rogers would have drank is hardly what we drink today, and it’s little things that end up bubbling up.

”Coca-Cola tastes different now.”

When Bucky sits down and says this, Steve pauses and looks at the can in his hand. “It says ‘original formula,’” he says, but Bucky has a point. It tastes different, more syrupy than it used to when they used to drink it, and it looks different, but—how long has it been, anyways, since they even had a bottle of Coke? How can they for certain qualify the differences? He drinks it, but now that Bucky’s mentioned how it’s different, he can’t stop thinking about that difference and it’s bugging him because he’s not sure he can even remember what the Coke they drank tasted like in the first place.

“Steve, if it was actually the ‘original formula,’ I’m pretty sure there would be cocaine in it.” Bucky drinks it anyways. “I don’t know. Out of everything to change, I’m not sure why I thought Coca-Cola wouldn’t.”

Things are…difficult, and that’s putting it mildly, but Steve isn’t sure he knows an accurate way to put it while still being nice. They’re both adjusting, but Steve has had time to do so normally. Bucky? Not so much. They’re lucky that he’s been able to recover most of his memories—but the downside to that is that he has to live with the memory of those assassinations, too. Heavy-duty electroshock treatment on steroids might have fried his brains, and Steve thinks that maybe he should be…thankful? that the damage wasn’t so permanent, but there are other side-effects. Depression, anxiety, nightmares—the list could continue. Thank God for Bruce Banner and his team of scientists, and thank God for improved understanding of mental health, but there’s still so much to deal with. Things are difficult, but—they’re working on it, have been working on it, will keep working on it for the rest of their lives.

So they try to find some level of common-ground, a degree of normalcy, and can you blame someone for being disappointed when something so simple as soda isn’t even the same comfort it used to be? It used to be a reminder of home, and now? Their old home is leveled. There are no reminders except in each other, and there are times when it feels painful to even try looking each other in the eye. It’s such a small thing to be bothered by, but the more Steve drinks from the can, the more it itches.

“Maybe it’s because it’s in a can instead of a glass bottle,” he says, and it’s cheap and they both know that it doesn’t work that way, but Bucky nods his head.

“Maybe.”

It feels like everything’s been soured, so instead of hanging around to watch another episode of M*A*S*H, Steve gets up and goes out to the fire escape of the apartment. Bucky doesn’t last long alone—and doesn’t that make sense, and why are they even watching this show anyways?—and sticks his head out of the window before reaching to tap Steve on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “Steve. I was joking about the cocaine thing. You can come back inside.” There’s a ‘please’ that hangs at the end of the sentence, unsaid but understood, and Steve can’t help the snort that comes out in response. “It’s probably just me, anyways. I don’t know what happened to my tastebuds when—well.” And even that—the jokes that are supposed to come easy but don’t—is difficult and it hurts. They can’t joke about tragedy anymore, can’t make it into something consoling, because there’s nothing that can be made lighthearted about any of it. Everything feels like problem after problem after insurmountable problem. “Steve.”

“I’m coming in. Get out of the way.” And Bucky moves, but only so much that Steve can get his legs inside and on the ground, and then he crowds against Steve, lines heavy on his face and mouth not so much a pout as an outright frown. “I’m not upset about the soda,” he says, and it’s almost honest and he tries to smile at Bucky, but it doesn’t look quite natural enough and Bucky—for all the time that he wasn’t himself—can recognize that. “Okay, okay. I’m a little upset about the soda. But that’s not—it’s not just the soda.”

“I figured. I know.” Bucky’s right hand comes up, like he’s thinking of something, but he makes a last minute change of decision and puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder instead. “It’s just easier to get upset about something like Coke rather than. Everything else.”

Even if it’s the same thing, it’s still different.

It’s still different and this is different and Steve wants everything to stop hurting so much.

They’ve had the conversation about a thousand different times now—hashing out the regret and guilt and pain and everything, how Steve is so sorry, how Bucky doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel normal again or even if he should, given everything that’s happened, the ‘I should have looked for you’s and the ‘I should have remembered you’s—and neither one of them particularly wants to have it again. It ends up with nothing feeling resolved—as if it ever could—and everything raw all over again. It feels like picking at a scab, and Steve can’t do it again. Bucky can’t do it again.

The hand on Steve’s shoulder isn’t enough. He pulls Bucky into a hug, firm and hard, and it’s not about the Coca-Cola at all anymore, if it ever was to begin with. Bucky goes rigid for a moment, but he hugs back, and there’s nothing, it feels like, that could break them apart from each other, which is the point. There aren’t really words, anymore, none that would mean anything more than this, but Steve has to say it at some point because if he missed the chance again, he’d die. He has Bucky back, and if they’re torn apart again, he won’t survive it.

If he says it, it’ll be corny and at one point in time, he’s sure Bucky would make fun of him, and maybe he will again soon, but even if it is corny, he can’t not say it. So he opens his mouth and lets the “I love you” tumble out against the side of Bucky’s head, and he hopes that Bucky doesn’t pull away. When he tightens his hold on Steve, it’s the best feeling Steve’s had in what feels like ages.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, breathy and with an edge to his voice. “Good thing, Rogers, because you’re stuck with me.” He waits a second. “I love you too.”

“Then who’s really stuck with who?” When Bucky laughs, it makes Steve feel like his entire body’s on fire. He should have said something sooner, should have said it the first time, but it’s out between the two of them now and there’s no taking it back. “Are you going to let me get away from the window any time soon?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You can’t say that the neighbors don’t love the view.” Bucky pulls back, though, gives Steve space to get really into the kitchen and then some so he can turn around and draw the shades shut. “Hey, Steve?”

He turns to look at Bucky. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for having the guts to say it first,” he says softly. He looks down at the floor and only looks back up when Steve’s shadow comes to eclipse the light from the kitchen’s overhead lighting. “Oh, come on. You don’t have to be that smug about it.”

“I’m not smug about anything,” Steve says. He’s smiling, though, and sometimes that can be the same thing. Bucky’s smiling too, and that’s enough. He stares at Bucky for a while, and finally Bucky starts to shift around, not moving that much, but anxious about something.

“Listen, if you want to kiss me, or anything, you really shouldn’t keep a guy waiting on that sort of thing, especially if they’ve been waiting to do it for something like eighty years. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but. It’s not great manners.”

“You’re lecturing me on good manners?”

“Steve—”

“Yeah, yeah. I think I get what you’re saying.” He’s still grinning, and he leans in so that he can kiss Bucky, and it’s different, but it’s nice. He likes it. Even if Bucky tastes like the Coca-Cola they were drinking.

——-

A few weeks later, Steve comes into their apartment carrying a paper bag from the supermarket and if it were later in the day, Bucky would say that it was alcohol. He watches Steve, who, after hanging up his jacket, starts to reach into the bag.

“I’ve heard from a reliable source—” he starts, and Bucky snorts, “—that the Mexican Coca-Cola they sell at some supermarkets is significantly better in quality and also, much closer to what we used to drink than the cans that are in the fridge right now.”

“Yeah? And who’s your reliable source?”

Steve looks at Bucky with a frown while he takes out two glass bottles from the bag and puts them down on the table in between them. “Sam Wilson.” He reaches for his keys to get the bottle opener from them, and when there’s a strange satisfaction that comes with taking the caps off the bottles. He slides one towards Bucky. “Drink up.”

Bucky takes it, drinks too fast and the Coke bubbles up and starts flooding his mouth and Steve laughs. It takes a second shot, but Bucky gets it, drinks slowly enough and swallows before putting the bottle back on the table. “It’s not bad,” he says, and Steve raises an eyebrow at him before trying his own.

It’s not the same, but it’s not bad, either.


End file.
